BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. — Matthew Lillard told the Journal that he is not smarter than a fifth grader. In fact, the 42-year-old actor admitted that he’s afraid of math.

He was forced to quickly overcome that fear to play the role of Phillip Sanderson, the algorithmic-driven baseball scout looking to usurp the old guys (read: Clint Eastwood) travel-and-watch method with his own. (Think Jonah Hill in “Moneyball”)

Lillard sat down with Speakeasy in a suite in the Four Seasons Hotel to chat about getting over his phobia of math, his directorial debut and batting 300.

You play the antithesis of Clint Eastwood in this film, the new technology statistics guy. What did you know about baseball and statistics going into this movie.

I knew nothing. Math in general scares me in a really primal way. I know nothing about math and I’m pretty sure my 5th grader can do more math than I can.

How did you deal with ERAs and RBIs and everything you character talks about in the film?

The same way I dealt with “Scooby-Doo0.” It’s just not real. So I never have to actually manipulate any facts but maybe that’s just because I am not Daniel-Day Lewis enough. Did you see him, he looks so good?

That’s weird. That’s an oxymoron for a Google hangout and an Abraham Lincoln movie.

Why do “Trouble With The Curve?”

Because Clint Eastwood is in it. Look, in my career I try to bat 300. In baseball, the-be-all-end-all of a batting average is 300. That’s what every major leaguer aspires too. 300 means you hit three out of 10 balls up at bat. So, for every three good movies that I have, there’s seven terrible ones. This would qualify as a good one. Also, it’s very rare to collect a legend in your history or be affiliated with a legend. This is one of those opportunities. And other than that, I am a blue-collar actor and it’s a gig. It’s a good gig. And there’s something to be said for that.

Yes, but there’s also something to be said for the more indie-based roles where you get to stretch your legs.

I wish there was “I get to create something I’ve never done before.” The drag of something like this is, I’m not really getting a chance to create something different. The drag is, this is just a guy who happens to be not a very nice guy in the film. But I have to defend my character at all times.

You just directed your first feature film, “Fat Kid Rules the World.” There had to be some complex math.

It is amazing how infrequently math comes into things. Situational math I know. If we are on a 50 [mm lens], I know you have to be five feet away. That’s the only math you do. That’s it, all day. And you just try to squeeze as many pages as you can into as little time as possible. So the division of math versus page I can do and I can also do lens size versus distance. But that’s it. If you give me an equation with a letter in it I am going to tell you that you are crazy. That doesn’t make sense.

I believe in the Internet in general. I think Al Gore did an incredible thing. With “Fat Kid Rules the World,” we have completely circumvented the traditional distribution model, and that all hinges on technology. We haven’t shifted the paradigm but we’ve inched the trajectory a little to the left. Any kid anywhere can request our movie to be screened at their local multiplex. It is a movie on demand in your hometown. It’s content meets desire meets location.